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Estrada Courts

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On the corner of Lorena Street and Olympic Boulevard is a cluster of Chicano murals painted in a low-income housing development in East LA. The murals at Estrada Courts were funded by the County as an effort to beautify East Los Angeles. Professional artists enlisted over a hundred youth painters, many of whom were involved in gangs. Over a few short years, dozens of murals were painted on every building in the development. Although each mural was unique, they had similar themes; for instance, many works in the development have a strong reverence for a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican past. Many murals also paid respect to contemporary Mexican and Chicano/a/x heros supporting community and labor activism. Many murals highlight struggles of the Mexican-American community, including police brutality, gang violence, the war in Vietnam, and drug use.

Three murals from Estrada Courts are recreated in this segment of the Great Wall of LA, honoring this significant site for the history of mural making in East Los Angeles.

We Are Not a Minority was painted in 1978 and is a powerful mural by artist Mario Torero, originally based on his 1977 black-and-white silkscreen titled "You Are Not a Minority," the mural was created to bring the spirit of San Diego’s Chicano Park art movement to Los Angeles, fostering visual solidarity among Chicano art communities through the Congreso de Artistas Chicanos en Aztlán. The mural’s title was intentionally changed from “you” to “we” to reflect the collective spirit of the civil rights movement. The central image of Che Guevara’s iconic portrait also serves as a nod to the 1917 “I Want You” Uncle Sam poster, subverting the call to enlist to be a call to Chicano empowerment . The typography is a striking mix of styles meant to add emphasis to the statement so the words jump off the wall. Restored in 1996 by the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles, the mural remains a vibrant symbol of the Chicano movement.

The VNE Mural was painted in the summer of 1973 by local youth under the direction of artist Danny Martinez. The mural is a tribute to the legacy and identity of the Varrio Nueva Estrada gang, which was founded at Estrada Courts. Funded by the county as part of a beautification program, the mural was created by young men from the community, many of whom saw the gang as a surrogate family amid difficult personal, economic and social circumstances. The mural features two hands rising from a tree stump, holding up the letters V-N-E, crowned by an eagle and a ribbon reading “In Memory of a Home Boy, 1973.” Also on the ribbon is a section written in Spanish which says “Que Rifan Todo Las Clicas en Barrio Nuevo Estrada Que Vivan” which translates as “Long Live the Ciques of the Nieghborhood of Estrada Courts.” It was painted in honor of Noely, a beloved gang member who was killed earlier that year. The tree stump symbolizes the deep roots of the varrio in the neighborhood, while the eagle represents Chicano pride and struggle. The mural stands as both a memorial and a declaration of this aspect of life growing up in Estrada Courts.


The Sacrifice Wall, painted in 1974 by “Cat” Felix in collaboration with young members of the VNE gang, draws its inspiration from a postcard depicting a frieze at the ancient Mesoamerican ball court of El Tajín, Veracruz. This mural is one of several at Estrada Courts that confront themes of death and sacrifice—reflecting the harsh realities faced by many Chicano and Mexican American youth during the era, including police brutality, the trauma of the Vietnam War, and gang violence.The figures in the mural are stylized as warriors drawing connections to Mesoamerican iconography and ancestry which was consistently present in the themes of Chicano murals. This imagery serves as both a reclamation of Indigenous heritage and a visual assertion of cultural pride. Yet the mural also embodies the burden of violence as Chicano youth are depicted are reluctant warriors, caught in a world where violence is ever-present and death looms close—making the mural both a tribute and a reflection of the sober reality. 

Sources:
 
Barnet-Sanchez, Holly, and Tim Drescher. Give Me Life: iconography and identity in East LA. University of New Mexico Press, 2016.
Fuentes, Ed. "Street Art Writes New Rules on Urban Linguistics." PBS SoCal, July 12 2013, https://www.pbssocal.org/history-society/street-art-writes-new-rules-on-urban-linguistics. 
Mahler, Kelsey. “Reclaiming Aztlán: The Visual Rhetoric of Pre-Columbian Imagery in Chicano Murals.” 2011. https://jstor.org/stable/community.36391461. 
SPARC. “Estrada Courts (1997).” Social and Public Art Reasource Center, Accessed May 2024. https://sparcinla.org/projects/estrada-courts-1997/.

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